THE BEST AND LEAST EDUCATED CITIES ARE…

For those in pursuit of metro areas with a higher-than-average number of educated residents, WalletHub released its report on 2023’s Most & Least Educated Cities in America.

To determine where the most educated Americans are choosing to settle down, WalletHub compared the 150 largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas across 11 key metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale to measure the highest educational attainment of the local population and the local quality of education. The data set ranges from the share of adults aged 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher to the racial education gap and the quality of the public school system.

According to Wallet Hub, Michigan’s Ann Arbor is the most educated city in the U.S., with the highest share of bachelor’s degree holders aged 25 and older, 57.2%. This is 3.8 times higher than in Visalia, California, the metro area that ranked in last-place 150th, with a 15.2% share of bachelor’s degree holders aged 25 and older.

Joining Ann Arbor in the top 10 of educated cities is San Jose; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Madison, Wisconsin; Durham, North Carolina; Boston; Raleigh, North Carolina; Seattle; and Austin.

And sharing the other end of the spectrum with Visalia as being among the least educated cities are Brownsville, Texas; McAllen, Texas; Bakersfield, California; Modesto, California; Stockton, California; Hickory, North Carolina; Beaumont, Texas; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Salinas, California.